North (French Literature Series) [Paperback]

Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Author), Ralph Manheim (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2007 | Series: French Literature Series

In this novel, Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan) offers us a vivid chronicle of a desperate man's frantic flight from France in the final months of World War II. Accompanied by his wife, their cat, and an actor friend, our autobiographical narrator Ferdinand leaves Paris for Baden-Baden (a World War II hideaway for wealthy Germans), is then sent to a bombed-out Berlin, and finally leaves for Denmark in search of the gold he had stashed there prior to the war. With the Third Reich in ruins and the Allied armies on Ferdinand's heels, North combines documentary realism with hallucinatory images, capturing the chaos of war and its toll on both victim and victimizer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Celine's autobiographical and hallucinatory novel about the chaos of Europe at the end of WWII.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This 1960 volume was first published in English in 1972. The plot follows a man's desperate attempt to get his family out of Nazi-occupied territory as the Reich begins to crumble at the end of World War II.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 454 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; 2nd edition (March 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564781429
• ISBN-13: 978-1564781420
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #473,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Witness devastation, December 27, 2000

By 

Walter Nicolau - See all my reviews

This review is from: North (French Literature Series) (Paperback)

In this partly autobiographical novel, we find Celine on the run through Baden Baden, a bombed out Berlin, and finally a small village at the outskirts of the remains of the Third Reich capital, on his way to what he hesitantly calls a refuge, during the chaos and total insanity of the final stages of the second world war.

Celine does not really complain the misery of his fate. In his cynical manner, he merely records his incredible encounters with seemingly all the renegades and twised characters of a scorched Europe and willing or not he witnesses the atrophies and deformities of human mind. Ironically, the author somehow manages to turn his characters into hillarious and amiable, even entertaining figures.

Celine writes like no other writer you have read. His truncated sentences, in bits and pieces all over the place, remind of a rather maniac mind spinning thoughts at the speed of light in an incohomprensive, bordering to delirious babble. That's Celine all right throughout North. In poignant remarks, making fun, laughing at himself, expressing same anxiety, bitternes, and cynical observations as in his other writings, Celine moves on, weary but undefeated. Life goes on.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The wildest of Celine's many wild rides, October 12, 2003

By 

bruce hutton (MESA, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: North (Hardcover)

I love all of Louis-Ferdinand Celine's novels, from "Journey to the End of the Night" to "Rigadoon", but I have to say that "North" is my favorite. It's hard to say why exactly, because his novels are mostly simlar in tone and style, except for "Journey", his first, which is his most accessible, ellipses-free novel...Bukowski (who turned me on to Celine in the first place) said that Celine went insane after his first book and didn't write much of consequence after that.
I would have to respectfully disagree. "North" certainly does read like an ultra-cynical, off-the-cuff, unruly beast, the rantings of a madman...Celine opens complaining about society, his publisher, the reading public, and his fellow authors, and seems to careen between his present-tense problems and his flight from both the Allies and the Nazis during World War 2, twenty years before, with no rhyme or reason...but I think there IS a reason: the experience. Probably a multiple-degreed Literature Professor (if he read Celine at all) could point out all sorts of latent themes and ironic stylistic touches, but I don't go in for all that...I just love running along behind Celine, trying to keep up. "North" is a whirlwind, a blast of vituperation and self-pity, the missing link between Surrealism and Punk Rock, and possibly the highest expression of what it means to be French and why so many people hate the French: if YOU were a little country crowded on all sides by beasts and fops, and everyone loved your wines and cheeses but squawked with hatred whenever you gave your opinion on something, how do you think YOU'D behave?

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Celine, still running from bombs, finds himself a nazi docto, January 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: North (French Literature Series) (Paperback)

Perpetually running from the perils of war, Destouches finds himself acting as collaborator in WWII.. a nazi doctor, routed around in confusion, &, as always, trying simply to save his own skin. This Dalkey Archive edition comes complete with a glossary of historical references.

Forget what you've heard about him writing only two good books, read this: "...whenever they get a chance, never fear, people make you waste hours and months...they use you as a wall to bounce their bullshit off of...blah! and blah! and blahblahblah!...you put up with it for an hour, you'll need two weeks to recover...blah! blah!...hitch a thoroughbred to a plow, it'll take him a month, two months, to get back in his stride...if he ever does...the same can happen to you for trying to be nice, for listening..."